The arena is being set up, Eigiel is coaching the kids and Gunther is narrating.
The World Championships will be played at the Moncton Colliseum (a building about 35 years old). Final preparations are still underway today. This includes the venue for the opening banquet. The decorations are generous and the dinner is likely to be of a high standard as well (tickets cost 90 CAD). Former world champions are also included in the opening ceremony program and it is true that you will meet a big curling star at almost every turn. I spoke for a while with Eigil Ramsfjell (Norway), a three-time world champion and Olympic bronze medalist. "Curling has changed a lot in the last fifteen years. The quality of the ice is much better than before, new training methods have come in, and overall the level of the players is much better in all aspects. I just play for fun anymore. I started coaching kids' teams together with Flemming (Davanger) and Pale (Trulsen). I run a boys' team, 11-14 years old, and my son is also in it," says Eigiel. His 11-year-old son Magnus adds: "We don't have any fixed positions in our team yet, but I'm probably the skip because I'm the best player of the bunch." I'm sitting having coffee with Gunther Hummelt (Austria), former president of the World Curling Federation. The conversation turns to a time when curling was striving to join the Olympic family. "I knew that everything revolved around whether the Japanese would be willing to host an Olympic curling tournament in Nagano in 1998. That's why, even before Nagano was decided as the host of the Olympics, I had a promise from Mr. Sol (a member of the 1998 Olympic Preparatory Committee) that the Japanese would do curling. It was five whole years of hard work, but on July 21, 1992 in Barcelona, at the IOC meeting, it was decided by vote that curling was an Olympic sport. Not everybody was in favour, for example the Canadian was against." Gunther tells me, spouting a lot of other details. What is certain is that for curling, its inclusion in the Olympic Games programme is the most important change in many decades, if not in all time.rn
photo by Eigiel and Gunther
